September 7th, 2017

Security:

Subject:

First D90 Shots

Time:

12:52 am

I took the Nikon D90 and my big Tamron 28-300mm f3.5-6.3 macro zoom to the park. Weather wasn't very nice (very grey) so I concentrated on textures etc. and the usual suspects e.g. the Albert Memorial. My aims here were first to check out the camera, and second to evaluate the lens, which I've owned for 10-11 years and tend to use fairly uncritically. I'm pretty pleased with the camera, the lens is not as good as I'd hoped, but about what I expected - in particular, it's fairly obviously at its best around 50-100mm, with the range either side of that not as good, and 200-300mm not wonderful. Again, I suspect that I'd get better results in brighter conditions. Given that it's about 15 years old I don't find that too surprising. At some point I need to look at replacing it, but for most of my purposes it's good enough - although I find the "all in one" type of lens useful, what I'm thinking about is getting something with a more restricted range but hopefully better performance. If anyone has any suggestions I'd appreciate them.

Comments:

One thing about getting a better camera is you start to notice some of the flaws in your lenses :-/

When I got the D7000 I noticed that my Nikon 18-200mm wasn't as sharp as I thought it was (on the D80). And getting the D800 really drove the point home! (18-200 has now gone to a niece, along with the D80.)

I've got the Nikon 12-24 DX lens, and am very happy with it on the D7000. It would work well on the D90. Some distortion, but nothing that gets in the way of the photography I do. I've got the 70-200 FX as well as the 24-70 FX — both are nice lenses but HEAVY (full-frame tends to do that).

This summer I travelled with just the 14-35 FX zoom, as well as 50 and 105 FX primes, and the D800 and only missed a couple of shots by not having the right lens available. Given that I cut my load by 50% I think that's acceptable for travelling — at least until I win the lottery and can hire an assistant to lug my gear :-)

I tend to shoot a lot of panoramas and landscapes, so wide-angle is what I need. I need to learn how to get more coverage with detail shots (which is why I took the 50 and 105 lenses with me) but I have a lot harder time seeing those pictures until the next day. (Learning to take better coverage is definitely the top of my photo-skills-to-develop checklist.)

This will give you an idea of what I shoot, so you can tell how much my advice works for your photographic style:

I tend to take a lot of wildlife pictures, also macro shots of insects etc., so I really need a longer lens. What I'm not sure is if I really need a range extending past 200mm - I have a manual 400mm prime lens that gives as good a result as I'm likely to get from any zoom in my price range. What tempts me is Tamron's 17-200 and 17-270(?) zooms, which if good would let me phase out my Nikon 17-55, but realistically something a bit less extreme (and preferably with vibration reduction) is probably a better bet.

That's very good - what I'm considering at the moment is something that covers say 18-100 (18-55 is a bit too limited) with a good macro capability, plus something like a 70-200 or 100-300 for longer ranges. The pictures from your 70-200 look pretty good. But there's no urgency given that 99% of my photos at the moment are for web use, eBay listings etc.